


Paradise Boulevard

by hudson



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hudson/pseuds/hudson
Summary: What happens in the celebratory haze of winning a World Series stays in the celebratory haze of winning a World Series. Maybe.
Relationships: Anthony Rendon/Trea Turner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Paradise Boulevard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohtempora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/gifts).

> This is a no-RL-significant-others universe.

He doesn’t actually know which one of them suggested it, but someone said “Vegas!” like a whisper from the devil on the shoulder, and both of them agreed, in the haze of a 36-hour drunken revelry, that Vegas would be an awesome idea. 

And you can’t roll into Vegas like the motherfuckin’ champs you are without cracking open a bottle (or four) of some serious champagne - the real stuff, not some sparkling wine shit (as if Trea knows the difference, but whatever, he’s in a winning mood and his winning mood has expensive taste). 

And you don’t down four or five bottles of champagne (plus a few whiskeys) (plus a couple bottles of Coors ‘cause Trea suddenly got a hankering for something cheap and familiar) between two people without waking up the next morning with a wicked fucking hangover. 

Which is why Trea’s currently got his head buried under a soft, fluffy hotel pillow and is limiting himself to simply nudging Tony’s leg with his toe to get him to move his arm off Trea’s back and maybe get up and go to his own bed. 

“Dude, personal space,” Tea mumbles into the bedsheets. He can’t even remember why they opted to share a room instead of each getting their own. 

Tony just grunts in response and somehow shuffles even _closer_, pressing himself along Trea’s side. His fingertips drag carelessly along Trea’s back. 

And it’s not actually the worst thing, having Tony draped across his back. Trea’s mind drifts to Houston, Tony jumping on him with that smile he’s got, as he falls back asleep. 

Some amount of time later - he’s got no idea how long, but the sun is definitely shining in through the curtains that they didn’t bother to close all the way - Trea rolls onto his side and clutches his head with both hands, debates whether to get up and go to the bathroom or just puke right here off the side of the bed.

In the end, not wanting to play the cleaning bill he’d be facing if he stays in bed force him up and stumbling across the room and into the bathroom to unload the contents of his stomach into the toilet. 

“Gross,” Tony’s voice comes filtering through the door, over the sound of Trea’s hacking. 

Trea gives another heave in response, then mumbles “Fuck off” as loud as the bog stuck in his throat will let him. He’s pretty sure he can hear Tony laughing at him, but he might be imaging that.

It’s when he’s clutching the side of the toilet on his third go around that he notices it.

The ring.

On his left ring finger.

He doesn’t wear rings. 

He’s crouched in front of the toilet, staring at his hand, when he hears Tony’s voice, loud and clear this time.

“The fuck is this on my hand?”

Trea pukes again. 

After he’s picked himself up from the bathroom floor and swayed a bit on his feet and taken a long piss and then leaned heavily against the sink in order to rinse his mouth out and splash water on his face, Trea walks heavily back into the room. He gives out a long, dramatic groan as he goes, mostly for the effect. 

Tony snorts at him, the asshole, and hands him a bottle of Gatorade. Trea’s eyes light up at the sight of the bottle, and his feet suddenly move a little faster across the floor to bring him within arm’s reach. 

That familiar, slightly chemical-y taste is like drinking the nectar of the gods, and he gulps it down greedily, too grateful for the electrolytes to care about the neon orange liquid escaping his mouth and spilling down his neck and bare chest. Tony just sits there on the bed and laughs at him. Double asshole. 

“Where’d you get this?” Trea asks with a shaky breath once he’s drained half the bottle. 

“Got a couple bottles last night from the hotel gift shop,” Tony replies with a shrug as he leans back against the pillows piled up on one side of the bed. He takes a swig from his own yellow bottle. Trea watches his throat move as he swallows. “Least I think I did. Don’t actually remember doing it.” Tony pause, considers for a moment. “Don’t really remember much of last night at all, now I’m thinkin’ on it.” 

“Yeah, dude, same,” Trea replies. He very nearly (impulsively) flops down on the bed, but remembers all of the puking of two minutes ago and thinks better of it, because he’s an adult who, even if he can’t hold _all_ of his liquor, at least knows better than to throw his body around in the midst of a hangover.

Instead, he takes a couple more sips of Gatorade and then starts slowly towards the bed before making a detour over to the window to yank the curtains closed. The room doesn’t go totally dark, but the shade is blissful on his weary, aching head. 

“Fuck, we had a lot last night,” he states the obvious with a sigh. Tony gives him a smile at that, and it makes Trea want to smile in response, despite how shit he feels right now. He goes over to lay back down on the bed, curls up a little next to Tony’s feet. 

“The last two nights,” Tony amends for him. “We’ve been drinkin’ non-stop since… what day even is it?”

The thing is, it’s easy to lose track of the days over the course of a 162-game season. He knows what month it is, usually (and certainly does when they have the privilege of playing in October), but day-to-day, there’s not much point in paying any attention. He knows it’s Sunday because it’s usually a guaranteed day game and if there’s a bobblehead night that usually means it’s a Tuesday or Wednesday or something, but other than that it’s hard to keep track of Saturday vs. Thursday vs. Monday, and doubly so, he’s learned, during the playoffs when pretty much everything starts after 7pm.

And that sidethought sends a thrill down his spine. He doesn’t realize he’s grinning until he catches Tony watching him with another one of those smiles - the soft, sleepy-looking one, when Tony’s not guarding anything and is just openly happy and fond. 

“Dude,” Trea says with a sigh before Tony can ask him what he’s thinking about. He can feel his cheeks burning. “I have no idea. It might be fucking New Years by now. Who knows.” 

Tony’s smile gets big now, breaking into a beaming grin. “Kinda feels like it, right?” 

They stare at each other for a long moment, both of them unable to stop grinning, both of them probably thinking about the same things - a flood of memories comes rushing through Trea’s mind, memories of two days ago or a decade or a lifetime ago, he has no idea right now, of making a diving stop on the infield, feeling so low and so full of impotent rage like he’s never felt at an ump and then Tony hitting a monster shot and Trea feeling like he’s flying, of watching that last pitch hit Gomey’s mit and everything just feeling golden after that.

Trea’s head is pounding, but it’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of their never ending celebration. He’s not sure he’ll ever really stop smiling.

Tony’s the first one to break away; he usually is when moments get a little too heavy, like this one is starting to feel, nice as it all is. 

“I gotta take a leak,” Tony says, untangling himself from the bedding so he can shuffle out of it. He groans as soon as he plants both feet on the floor, and Trea has the dumb urge to laugh at him. “Fuck, my head,” Tony sighs and slopes off towards the bathroom. 

Trea mostly doesn’t watch him go. Mostly. He does catch a glance of Tony rubbing the back of his neck, but that’s mostly because Trea’s scanning the room for his pants. 

It’s strange, though, when he finally finds his pants in a heap next to the minibar (Trea takes a quick look inside and discovers that it too fell victim to their partying last night, with only one mini bottle of red wine and a movie-theater-sized box of M&Ms remaining), and he pauses mid-way through pulling them on as the _what now?_ hits him. 

It’s the fifth time they’ve had a massive post-win celebration in the last six weeks, but after each previous one there was still work to do. They popped champagne and poured beer on one another (mostly everyone else on Dozier) and danced around the clubhouse and played Calma eight times, but there was always a deadline on it all and the looming knowledge that tomorrow was a work day. 

And now… there’s not. But there’s still something looming that Trea can’t quite put his finger on. And that’s all aside from the _what now?_ of it all. 

The rest of the guys are on their way back to DC, or maybe already there (Trea’s still not clear on what time it is, and hasn’t gone looking for his phone yet). They’ll be heading to the park, cleaning out their lockers, saying their goodbyes for winter, and Trea’ll have to go through that song and dance at some point too, even though he brought some of his shit home before they went out to Houston, knowing that they wouldn’t be playing another game in DC in 2019, and knowing he’ll be back there in a few months anyway.

Most of them will be back.

Tony groans again, loud and full of melodrama, and Trea smiles to himself.

And _that_ is when he notices _it_. The other _it_.

There’s a thick piece of paper on the floor, slightly crumpled from where Trea’s pants had been bunched up on top of it, but the fancy embossment, the cheesy gold lettering… the words themselves. There’s no mistaking it.

_MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE_

_ _His mind is blank. He looks down at his hand, remembering all of a sudden the ring he’d noticed earlier and then promptly forgotten about. _ _

_ _“Dude, you gonna walk around like that?” Trea can hear the laughter in Tony’s voice, but all he can see is the ring on his finger and the marriage certificate on the floor. _ _

_ _“Like what?” he asks, vaguely, not really paying any attention to what he’s saying. _ _

_ _Tony walks around to come stand in front of him, nodding down at him and trying to catch his eye. Trea can’t look at him. _ _

_ _“It’s customary to wear both legs of your pants, genius,” Tony tells him, again with that smile in his voice, and Trea’s starting to feel sick again. _ _

_ _“What’s that?” he says in response, indicating the certificate on the floor with his chin._ _

_ _Tony turns to check it out, crouches down in a catcher’s squat and pokes at the paper with his finger like it’s a fish dropped on land. He stares at it for a long moment, smoothes his hand over the creases, rubs his thumb over Trea’s badly-signed name for just a moment. _ _

_ _Then he seems to notice the ring on his own finger. Trea drops his pants to the floor._ _

_ _“Huh,” Tony says after a long moment. _ _

_ _Trea laughs, shocking even himself. “That’s all you’ve got, man? ‘Huh’?”_ _

__Tony straightens back up to his full height, taking the certificate with him and gripping it by both sides to bring it up to his face and inspect it more closely. As if it’s suddenly going to say something other than _Trea Turner_ and _Anthony Rendon_ and _Join in lawful wedlock_ if he just stares at it hard enough. 

“Fuck,” Trea blurts out, rubbing his forehead as a new headache starts to creep in at his temples. “What the fuck did we _do_ last night?”

When Tony looks up at him, his expression is unreadable, which isn’t unusual. Fuckin’ Tony. 

“I remember…” Tony begins, then pauses for a long moment, staring at the wall over Trea’s shoulder. “I remember playing slots on the casino floor. And some Blackjack in a back room, the VIP thing. And a couple bottles of champagne back there.”

Trea nods. “Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Why the fuck did we play slots?” 

“Fuck if I know.” 

“We were at a bar somewhere,” Trea goes on, searching his memory for clues like he’s a detective. Tony shifts his gaze to the flood and starts rubbing his forehead. “Was that in the hotel? Or did we go out to the strip?” 

Tony scrubs a hand up and down his face. Trea watches sunlight glint off of the ring that Tony still hasn’t taken off. Trea hasn’t taken his off yet either, and doesn’t feel much of a hurry to do so. 

“I don’t know,” Tony replies, his voice heavy and a little muffled behind his hand. 

They’re both quiet for a long moment and try as he might, Trea just can’t think of how they could’ve gotten from playing cards and toasting victory to exchanging rings.

“I always figured this kinda thing was just, like, a massive joke or something,” Trea mumbles, mostly to himself. “Wake up from a drunken night accidentally married... “ A thought suddenly occurs to him. “Hey, you think - you think anyone woulda recognized us?” 

He has a sudden vision of what Twitter might look like right now, victorious Nats tweets, gifs of their celebration pile in the infield replaced with iPhone-quality pics of him and Tony at a seedy chapel, headlines telling the world that Trea just accidentally married his best friend. 

Maybe Tony is having the same thoughts, because he suddenly pushes past Trea and goes to puke in the toilet. 

To say that Tony is a private person is putting the gentlest spin on it possible. Trea heard once, some study or something he must’ve come across online somewhere, that the average social media user gets a shot of endorphins when they get a new like, a new retweet, a new follower. Tony is the opposite. He’d happily just, like… go out onto the field and hit balls over the fence and turn quick doubleplays and throw down tags on runners and then head back into the clubhouse and come back again and do it all the next day and never have anyone ask him for a quote or sticking a microphone in his face or pushing him to tweet more.

Sometimes Trea thinks that Tony would be happier if no one ever recognized him or knew him at all; if he could just treat going to the ballpark like regular dudes go to an office, just a job that’s awesome and fun and aggravating and stressful and makes them all very rich men and doesn’t come with any attention or spotlight. 

Trea follows Tony into the bathroom a moment later, finds him pushing himself to a stand and flushing the toilet.

“I mean, look,” Trea says as Tony washes his hands, rinses his mouth out. “Look. It’s - it’s Vegas, right? Who even watches baseball around here?”

Tony snorts at that. “You met Bryce Harper, right?” 

“Well, fine, Harper watches baseball.”

“I meant that - that fucking of _course_ people watch baseball here.” Tony pauses to take another swirl of water and spit it out into the sink. “The motherfuckin Rookie of the Year superstar is from here, of course it’s a baseball town. They’ve got a minor league team. They’re talkin about moving the A’s here, for fucks sake!” 

Trea doesn’t flinch back from Tony’s shouting, and instead just rolls his eyes. 

“Fine, okay whatever. Still doesn’t mean anyone noticed us.” 

“Fuck,” Tony says, and then again. He runs a wet hand along the back of his neck and Trea follows the movement. And a thought strikes him. 

“We were at that bar,” he says. Tony looks up at him expectantly. “In the hotel or out on the strip. Wherever. We were drinking whiskey by that point and you were… rolling a set of dice back and forth on the bar, I think?” He pauses for a moment, trying to concentrate on the memory. “Did you steal dice from a craps table?”

Tony stares back at him, brow furrowed. “I… maybe? Maybe. Yeah, yeah, I remember the dice. Why’d I do that?”

“_How_ did you do that?” 

That earns him a flash of Tony’s grin, so sudden it almost feels random, and Trea’s chest grows warm. He can’t help smiling back. He has the urge reach out and touch Tony, to press his hands against Tony’s (still) bare chest, maybe run his fingers down to Tony’s leg and - 

\- And another thought occurs to him. 

“We were at the bar and we were drinking whiskey, and you were getting handsy with me.”

Tony doesn’t exactly balk at that, but his eyes widen with an expression that says he desperately wants to protest. 

It’s not totally clear in his head, but he can remember smiling at Tony over the rim of his whiskey glass, can remember Tony leaning heavily into him, remembers him giving Trea one of those open smiles and then settling a hand heavily on Trea’s knee, stroking his fingertips back and forth over the inside of Trea’s leg.

He can’t remember what the context was, or if there was any context, can’t remember what they’d been talking about, but he remembers Tony’s hand drifting higher...

And the thing is… the thing is, it’s not like they haven’t fucked around before. 

It doesn’t happen often, and they’ve never, ever talked about it. It’s just something they’ve done a few times after big games when they’re both feeling like they’re coming down from something and they’re antsy with a feeling neither one can name and need something, another body to press up against. The first time was after a home game, and Trea should’ve been home but instead he’d gone with a couple of the guys to Harp’s swanky highrise apartment, drank some beer and played some video games, and at some point Trea found himself in a closet with Tony, looking for more beer and laughing at something stupid like they’d just gotten high.

Tony was looking at him with his eyes all soft and smiling and they were in this small space together and he’ll never be sure which one of them moved first, but somehow they were kissing, but really fucking going at it - Trea’s tongue in Tony’s mouth and Tony’s hands grabbing Trea’s ass, and all of the energy of the day pouring into one another as they shoved and scrappled with each other, pressed themselves together, pushed hands up under t-shirts, and at some point Tony got his hand on Trea’s cock and Trea squeezed his eyes shut and breathed out these shuddering breaths that sounded defeaning to his own ears, but Tony never shushed him. He just stroked and stroked and pressed his face into Trea’s neck, darted his tongue out at one point to lick Trea’s collarbone, and that was about all Trea needed (or maybe all he could handle). He came in Tony’s hand. Then he shoved Tony’s jeans to the floor so he could return the favor before his head cleared too much and he thought any better of it.

They never talked about that first time - just straightened the clothing and tried not to look too conspicuous as they avoided meeting each other’s eyes and went back out to the rest of the guys - but it’s never impacted their friendship. It’s just one of those things. They just do it and it feels fucking great and then it’s over. 

Tony’s tongue is fucking amazing, is the thing. Trea’s never cared much about freaking out about it or what anything means, because… that tongue. 

And maybe there’s something to the way that Tony looks at him with that smile he’s got.

So, it happens sometimes. Mostly after games, mostly on the road when they’ve got the anonymity of hotel rooms and the excuse of too much free time and too much excess energy. And one time after a game of one-on-one on the basketball court in Tony’s apartment building in D.C., high on adrenaline and feeling goofy with the faux competition; Tony had slid a hand through Trea’s hair in a move that could’ve been played off as just friendly and overly affectionate, but Trea responded by turning his head and pulling Tony’s thumb into his mouth and sucking on it for a long, stomach-flipping moment before he’d dropped to his knees and went after something bigger. 

But this is the first time either one of them has really said much about it out loud.

Trea’s nervous for a moment that Tony is going to panic or something, try to deny it or something. Instead what he says is, “Okay… okay, but how’d we get from me feelin’ you up to us with fuckin’ rings on our fingers?” He probably _should_ be panicking, but of course, ‘cause he’s Anthony Fucking Rendon, he’s gotta be all chill and steady about this. Asshole again. 

“I don’t know,” Trea replies, shaking his head, and then looks down at his hand again. “And speaking of the rings - did we seriously stop at a jewelry store or something - while drunk - to get these stupid things before we got married?” 

“Or after.” Tony looks thoughtful. “I kind of remember a store. Some kinda conversation about rings, and… and we’re gonna have rings coming to us in a few months.”

“I think I made a joke about inscribing our names on the World Series ring,” Trea replies, horrified at his cheesiness. 

They’re both quiet for a long moment. Trea twists the ring around on his finger, marvels at the unfamiliar feeling of the weight and wonders how they could’ve been in a good enough state of mind not just to grab two rings, but to grab to appropriately-sized rings.

“Hey, did we. Did we, uh, mess around last night?” Tony asks, and Trea tries to conjure up any memories of it. He can remember the casino and the bar and the rings, he’s kind of got an idea of the wedding chapel - Tony laughing at him and pushing a few strands of Trea’s hair away from his forehead, Trea leaning into the touch, Tony smiling at him and saying something about sticking around, sticking around… Trea tries to grab the end of that thought, but it’s too hazy.

“I don’t think so. I kinda remember stumbling back up here, just pulling my shirt off and crashing.”

He can remember a lot of feelings from throughout the night - a lingering excitement that seemed to follow them like that first bit of warm air in spring when there’s a full baseball season ahead; a sense of comfort that’s unique to times when Trea’s with Tony, especially when they’re alone, something that’s inarticulate and hazy and nice; warmth, a lot of warmth and laughter, and also a creeping, aching sense of _this isn’t going to last_, and the thought suddenly appears in the back of his mind once again. 

“No,” Trea says again, shaking his head, suddenly full of a prickling sense of discomfort and unsure of himself. “No, we didn’t - I probably would’ve, but I’m not sure I’d’ve been able to get it up anyway.” He says it while forcing a smile, but Tony knows him well enough and seems to be seeing right through him. 

“What?” Tony asks, and Trea shakes his head, looking down at his hands. He lets out a long breath.

“What do you remember about last night?”

He looks back up to catch Tony shrugging. “I think, uh… I remember one of us, back in Houston, one of us saying we should go party in Vegas, and then catching a flight. I remember the blackjack table and some of the bar, the bartender pouring us one on the house - aw fuck, he must’ve known who we were…”

“What else?” Trea prods, suddenly desperate to know something, though he’s not quite sure what. 

“I don’t know.” Tony shrugs. He twists the ring around on his finger with his other hand, but never actually takes it off. “I remember you laughing, smiling a lot. It’s fun seein’ you laugh.”

Trea has no idea what to say to that. His chest feels tight.

“And we were talking about… about New Year’s Eve, maybe?” Tony pauses, thinks on it a bit. “I think we were making plans? That seem right?” 

“Yeah, think so.” He can remember the conversation in bits and pieces, but there’s still this big blank spot, and still this sense of dread that’s settled over him like a fog, fighting off that elated feeling leftover from the playoffs. “But there’s something else.”

“Well no shit there’s something else,” Tony snaps, but it’s not mean - he’s almost smiling, which makes Trea want to smile in return. “We’re fucking _married_. What do we even do about this? Call a lawyer or something?” 

He runs a hand through his hair and the movement flexes the tattoos on his chest; Trea’s gaze catches. He has to force himself to stop staring, because this is starting to feel a little more serious than buddies who just fuck around sometimes to let off some steam (and accidentally got married). 

“No, yeah, I know,” Trea replies. “But I mean something else last night that’s - that’s makin’ me feel…” He stops himself, feeling stupid and unsure about how to finish the sentence. 

Tony sighs. “I don’t know, man. Maybe it doesn’t even matter at this point. Done is done, we just gotta figure out what to do about it now.”

Tony goes to grab his phone - Trea takes a glance at his, opens up Twitter and breathes a sigh of relief to see that it’s business as usual with a significant Nats post-victory slant - and tells Trea that he’s shooting a text to his agent to ask for advice. He tosses his phone onto the bed once that’s done, then flops down onto the bed himself, stretching his arms out above his head. It makes his chest and abs look even more all muscle, and fine, Trea can acknowledge that it’s fucking _hot_. 

_I’m fucking **married** to that dude_. It’s a wild thought. For some reason, it makes him smile.

They won a World Series together, and now they’re married. 

“Can tell you one thing,” Tony says. Trea takes a brief moment to be thankful that neither one of them is freaking out about any of this as much as they probably should, but then Tony’s not really one to ever freak out about anything. Trea could probably reveal right now that not only are they married, Trea’s also carrying their twins, and Tony’d probably just shrug and start planning for their preschool. “I’m never fucking drinking champagne again. I am so fucking sick of that stuff.”

That earns a burst of laughter from Trea, the absurdness of it shocking him into a fit of giggles, and when he looks over, Tony’s got that soft, fond smile again, staring at Trea like… 

...Like he’s something special or something. 

And, well. Fuck. It’s possible there’s something else going on here. Feelings or whatever. Fuck. 

The thing is, he really wants to kiss Tony right now. And Tony’s still just staring up at him from the bed. And something else is tugging at Trea, that same feeling that’s been lurking all day, that makes his smile fade.

“Should put that in my contract,” Tony says, like he’s trying to draw Trea’s good mood back out. “‘Championship lockerroom blowouts may only contain locally-brewed craft beer for the purposes of drinking-slash-dumping on fellow players.’” He moves his hand through the air as he speaks, mimicking lines on a contract page. “‘No name brands, no champagne. Union-made only,’ that’ll make Doo happy.” He looks up at Trea and grins proudly, but Trea can’t return it. 

“You’re gonna leave,” he says as the memory comes crashing back into him, what they’d been talking about last night. “You’re gonna sign somewhere else.” 

Tony sits up at that, his expression suddenly serious. “I don’t - nothing’s decided yet. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“You’re gonna go,” Trea says again, shaking his head. That fog, that unhappiness settles fully on his shoulders now, but at least he knows what it is, which makes his chest feel a little looser. 

Tony stares at him for a moment, and in the game of free agency, ‘I don’t know’ about resigning is as good as a clear answer, even if nothing’s written down on paper yet.

“I locked you down,” Trea says, speaking as if he’s the one being told. Tony blinks at him, confused. Trea’s confused too, but somehow it makes sense (especially factoring in all the booze). “I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, what happened - but it was something about you leaving. About you not being in D.C. next year, or about you being gone, like after New Year’s I wouldn’t be seeing you in a month for Sping Training, or… I don’t know, just that after we leave here, that’s it. And I think I said that I wanted to lock you down, and I think that’s when you dragged me out of the bar and into a jewelry store…” he trails off. 

He’s still not sure which one of them suggested fucking _marriage_ \- he’s pretty sure the ridiculous gesture of buying rings would still be pretty over the top all on its own - but it might’ve been either one of them, because Tony’s looking at him again with an expression that’s so open and full of emotion that Trea can’t quite name. But he still looks so fond, and Trea’s stomach warms at the sight.

He’s halfway desperate for Tony not to leave next year, for more reason than one, as it turns out.

“I ain’t dying, you know,” Tony tells him softly, sitting up fully now on the bed with his knees drawn up and arms resting on top of them. “We’ve got phones and iChat and Skype and planes, and _if_ I do go play somewhere else, we’ll still see each other.”

“I know,” Trea replies, moving to stand at the foot of the bed, wanting to climb into it next to Tony but feeling too stupid and too needy to make the move. “I know. This is dumb.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And we got to win one together, that’s fucking awesome. More than most - most people get.” He stumbles over the words, unsure of exactly how to define their relationship at this moment. 

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. “We’ll always have the World Series?”

It’s the lamest of lame jokes and it makes Trea smile. “And Vegas,” he replies, holding up his hand to check out the ring again, still not totally sure what to make of it. He might be getting used to the sight. 

Tony reaches a hand out for him, and Trea takes it, lets himself be pulled in to sprawl on the bed next to Tony. Tony flops back so that they’re shoulder to shoulder and lets his hand rest on Trea’s wrist, just above his hand. It’s maybe the most intimate they’ve ever been, including the times they’ve sucked each other off.

“You know I’ll miss you too, right?” Tony says softly, his fingers stroking back and forth across Trea’s skin. “If I go, I mean. Ain’t gonna be an easy decision. If I go.” 

“Yeah, ‘course I know that,” Trea replies. He moves his hand up so that he can brush his fingers against Tony’s, and Tony responds by tangling their fingers together. He doesn’t want to try and pressure Tony, at least not seriously - it’s a crazy, massive decision that’s worth more money than most people are able to dream about, and he doesn’t want Tony to regret it, whichever way he goes - so he’s trying not to say too much about it, except, “It won’t be the same without you out there next to me.”

“I know.” Tony’s voice is softer than it almost ever is, which is really doing things to Trea. “Same for me. But in here, away from all that, you and me - this ain’t gonna change. Whatever it actually is.”

That makes Trea smile, for some reason - _whatever it actually is_ \- and he nods and turns his head to rest against Tony’s. Their rings make a soft clacking noise where their fingers are clasped together, and the longer he wears it, the more reluctant Trea is to take the ring off. 

He’s not quite ready to talk about what this is between them or where they go from here. He knows that they’ll need to figure out what the hell they’re doing about this marriage bullshit soon. But for now, he’s happy enough when Tony rolls over and drapes an arm across his chest and they can ignore all of the complications and nervousness and questions and just be here together.

“Husband and husband,” he says softy, mildly, as he starts to drift into sleep.

Tony laughs at him and gives him a light kick on the shin. “Dumbass.” He pauses for a beat, and then, “My dumbass husband.”

~end~


End file.
